Development tools exist that enable developers to build a Web site on a local machine and then publish such Web site to a remote Web hosting environment via a publication process. For the Web site to be published successfully, it is often the case that companion resources that correspond to various resources used by the local version of the Web site must first be provisioned within the remote Web hosting environment. For example, if the local version of the Web site includes a database of a particular type, then a corresponding database must be provisioned within the remote Web hosting environment prior to publishing. In this way, data can be uploaded from the local database to the remote database during the publication process. The published version of the Web site must also be properly configured to utilize the provisioned resources so that the published version of the Web site will run correctly.
Conventional development tools typically do not provide any functionality by which a developer can provision resources in a remote Web hosting environment that are required for publishing a Web site thereto or by which a developer can configure the published Web site to utilize such provisioned resources. Rather, developers are typically required to leave the development tool and interact with the remote Web hosting environment via an alternate interface (e.g., a Web browser) to cause the required resources to be provisioned and properly configured. This can be an arduous and complicated undertaking for the developer as different provisioning and configuration processes may need to be performed for different resource types and/or different remote Web hosting environments. Furthermore, depending upon the experience level of the developer, it is possible that the developer may not be aware of all the resources that must be provisioned within the remote Web hosting environment or how a published version of the Web site should be configured to utilize such resources.